observing

by 伊凌 yi ling

call them Bailang because this is what the rapacious Han do.

“Among the many supporters at the camp is Savungaz Valincian of the Indigenous Youth Front, who says: “After the area of the traditional territory is decided, under this regulation, it won’t be the property of Indigenous people, it only gives the right of consent and there are limits to what we can decide. We won’t have the final say over what will happen on our lands.”

While Truku indigenous, as with other indigenous communities, should by constitutional law hold the rights to their land, oftentimes it is that Taiwanese business take advantages of legal loopholes to appropriate indigenous land for commercial development, sometimes with the backing of the local government.

Been observing the ways they go around scamming this land. The casual commercialization and inconsideration of beauty. Unsurprisingly, they are opportunistic about queerness, indigeneity, tea, youth labor, the eastern shore. We see the president dole out countless meaningless apologies and conciliatory actions towards Asia Cement Corp. as they continue mining Truku land, sending in police to clear out the protestors whose leader supported her candidacy and now is left with heartbreak. I’ve met an environmental academic professor who taught in Cheng Gung University for years and now, exposes his resentment towards his wife and the feminine by seeking out an experience in Christianity and Buddhism–instead of reckoning with his own inner life. I’ve met an Asian American academic come to Taiwan to learn Chinese and throw toxic temper tantrums when women around him don’t serve his needs for sex, intimacy, spirituality, sensuality. I’ve watched a tea commerce lady try to sell her wares for Harney & Sons prices without any international reach or quality to compete, while trying to rope me in with the “family” business angle when her own family is clearly uncommunicative and her kids mentally dead with resentment and lack of resiliency. I’ve watched pyramid schemes make their way to the countryside because the city folks passed laws to ban them.

how utterly uncreative, boring and dismal. these scams are so similar around the world.